162 
On Technical Education . 
[March, 
Our representatives in Parliament vote each year a consi- 
derable sum of public money for the propagation of this 
unmitigated cram, under the misnomer “ for teaching 
Science.” Prof. Huxley has stated that “ we study in these 
days not to know , but to pass, the consequence being that we 
pass and don't know ” ; but of all the systems that contribute 
to the extension and propagation of counterfeit knowledge, 
that of the Department of Science and Arts certainly excels 
every other. For by this system the majority of the students 
are not taught to observe and experiment themselves, and 
to state and reason on the results they have obtained, and 
yet observation and experiment are the sources of our know- 
ledge of the Indudlive Sciences ; they are the most important 
and indispensable qualifications a student of these Sciences 
ought to possess. Instead of obtaining, as all students of 
Science ought, a “ knowledge of things,” which can only be 
obtained by observing and experimenting, the Department’s 
students, owing to the system, only acquire the spurious 
article, “ the names of things.” 
I believe we commence on a wrong and erroneous system 
for teaching some of the Sciences, especially Chemistry, 
and the Germans are no exception to the rule ; we commence 
by teaching the fadts of the Science by means of ledtures. 
Even if the pupils could remember all the fadls they are told 
in lectures it would be mere information, not knowledge, 
still less Science ; if a student committed all the fadfs con- 
tained in Gmelin’s great work on Chemistry to memory, it 
would not make him a chemist, for it would only amount to 
information. Hunter, in his “ Principles of Surgery,” has 
very succinctly stated the essence of all true teaching : he 
says “that his objedf was to fit his pupils to aft as occasion 
may require from comparing and reasoning on known prin- 
ciples. Too much attention,” he goes on to say, “ cannot 
be paid to fadls ; yet too many fafts crowd the mind without 
any advantage, any further than they lead to principles.” 
“ These words,” states Prof. Humphry, “ give the very 
marrow of sound teaching, and should be graven wide and 
deep on the walls of every school, and in the heart of every 
teacher. They have, alas ! been too little heeded.” 
A person totally ignorant of Chemistry may be trained to 
perform mechanically certain chemical operations, as a man 
can be taught mechanically to work a steam-engine : the 
porter in a chemical laboratory, for instance, may be taught 
to prepare or purify certain compounds ; boys, without the 
least acquaintance with the science, are frequently taught 
in chemical factories to analyse quantitatively the substances 
